


Hear That Breaking Sound

by Zilentdreamer



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Genre: Accident, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort Bingo Prompt, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 19:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15647532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zilentdreamer/pseuds/Zilentdreamer
Summary: “Care to explain to me how a machine built to manipulate the time streams managed to blow a hole into another dimension?  Which is where you are by the way,” the man says, and not only does he sound immensely satisfied with himself, but Billy’s pretty sure the sonic array’s low hum sounds smug as well.





	Hear That Breaking Sound

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my hard-drive for a while and when I joined the H/C Bingo community out of a desperate attempt to re-ignite my love of writing, I saw this and after a full re-write decided it was a perfect fill-in for my "accident" prompt.

Billy wakes up face down on ice cold concrete, ears ringing and filled with the utter conviction that he needs to get some carpet installed.  Bare concrete floors tend to be the typical preference for an evil lair in that cold, menacing kind of way that usually involves chemical stains and old blood.  Or so Billy had thought anyway, but in his experience the reality has proven somewhat different than what he had originally intended. 

In general he tries not to mess with chemicals, at least not since that one incident that had no witnesses other than himself and thus did not happen.  Plus it’s not like he’s the sort to bring victims back to his lair so the only blood that tends to decorate the floor is his. He isn’t masochistic enough to leave that lying around, not yet anyway.  So really, the concrete is going to have to go.

He’ll see if Moist knows a guy who can install it, which is likely, since Moist seems to know a lot of people.  

Billy manages to roll over, barely.  The pain convinces him that lying completely still for a little bit longer is a fantastic idea.  Quite possibly the best he’s ever had. So he lies flat and closes his eyes, trying to ignore the chill of his sadly carpet-less floor while evaluating how much trouble he’s in.  Experience tells him he has a cracked rib, possibly two. Unfortunately he is more than passing familiar with the burning ache along his side, courtesy of Captain Hammer. 

Unfortunately his brilliant idea is somewhat ruined by breathing and every exhale makes his ribs feel like they are on fire.  Make that a firm yes on his ribs being cracked then. Eventually the combined misery of his aching ribs and the growing chill from the floor make him reconsider his position, quite literally, and he lifts his head.  When the attempt is answered only by a slight pounding in his temples, almost behind his eyes, he breathes a sigh of relief. That turns into a wince when his ribs protest. 

Bracing himself to stand, Billy tries to take a deep breath in shallow sips of air.  It does nothing to ease the pain in his ribs, is in fact more painful than simply breathing.  He might be better off staying on the floor. Eventually he decides that continuing to lie here is a type of pathetic that Dr. Horrible wouldn’t tolerate and so he pushes up onto his knees.  The pain is staggering and light explodes behind his eyes as the air is pushed out of him in a keening gasp. His arm is clamped tight to his side in some semblance of support. All its really doing is making the pain so much worse and the world starts to spin beneath him.

Probably because he stopped breathing in a desperate attempt to make the pain stop.  Not his brightest decision since he is now moments away from toppling over.

It doesn’t take a massive leap of logic to assume the Time Reverter didn’t work. Or if it did it’s in the running to take over where Captain Hammer left off. It’s one thing to end up on the floor with cracked ribs because a superhero put him there.  Quite another if he did it to himself. 

Not that the E.L.E. will be surprised.  He wears his red coat like armor and hides his eyes behind the dark goggles, but he can’t match the same virulent hate the others carry with them.  It’s taken him this long, and far too late, to realize that he doesn’t want to. 

Billy somehow manages to stay on his feet, even with the pain making spots flash across his eyes.  His are shaking and he’s pretty sure the only reason he is still standing is the way he’s bracing his hands on his own knees.  The blood is rushing in his ears and for a split second everything wavers before the ground grows solid beneath his feet once more.  He can taste blood in his mouth and poking around with his tongue locates the source as a shock of pain in his left cheek. The taste of copper grows stronger.  He tongues at it a few more times, fascinated by the edges of the wound and not in any particular rush to go anywhere. Everything feels foggy and slightly removed.  He can’t imagine why he was so determined to get up since he didn’t hurt this much while lying prone on the ground.

He’s going to need to call Moist for help which is all kinds of unbearable right now.  Not only will Moist be very put out that Billy was doing ‘experiments’ without him again, the phone is all the way across the room.  There’s something almost cruel about knowing he’s going to have to endure no small amount of pain getting to the phone, only to endure one of Moist’s ‘purposes of henchmen’ speeches once he got here.  The only bright spot was the knowledge that Moist would bring his first aid kit with him, just like he did every time he visited Billy. 

It has occurred to Billy, and been pointed out to him several times by an exasperated Moist, that he might want to try stocking his own first aid kit.  But before this recent rash of experiments gone wrong the only reason he’d needed a first aid kit was due to Captain Hammer who hasn’t shown his face since  _ \- that day _ \- and Billy hadn’t seen the point since nobody else was going to touch him, people barely even looked at him now when he stepped outside in costume.  

Regardless of what his cracked ribs are telling him, his phone is actually not that far.  He left it on his work table - 

Billy blinks in surprise as he realizes he is standing in an empty room.  Everything is gone. The work table piled high with thick sheaves of paper that were the culmination of his research on time travel.  The side cabinet with the chemistry set he’d gotten for effect rather than any real purpose, and his plush armchair that was the perfect color to hide the truly unsettling number of bloodstains he’d left on it. 

Staring at the vast emptiness of his lab, Billy concludes that he is going to have to add ‘concussed’ to his list of injuries.  There’s no other reason for how it has taken him to notice. His gaze sweeps over the echoing emptiness of his lab and swallows hard against the first stirrings of true alarm.  There’s nothing smashed or broken, no glass fragments and tattered papers. Everything is just...gone. All the furniture and in-progress experiments. Even more, it’s not just the floor that is cold, even the air is icy and every breath leaves a plume of heat that quickly dissipates.  

Billy has blown himself up enough times in recent months that he knows whatever this is...its something else.  Clearly the Time Reverter is responsible and Billy isn’t sure if that makes this better or worse. Things tend to get complicated when messing with time, he’s seen the movies, not to mention has been told by Moist and his friends almost every time he dragged himself to one of Moist’s little get-togethers.  So he did his best not to build something that would blow up the world, just change it a little, or a lot. 

Clearly he didn’t blow up the world, which was good.  Billy couldn’t find it in himself to be surprised that he’d managed to only blow up himself.  He huffs out a breath at the injustice of it all and instantly regrets it when it leaves a trail of fire along the line of his ribs.  

The scrape of his foots on the bare concrete is loud in the empty space and Billy can’t shake how uneasy it makes him.  An explosion with no debris is just wrong, especially when his body is the only thing playing by the rules of what happens when ‘something blows up’.  He’s trying to wrap his already rattled brain around what might have happened. Maybe the Time Reverter did work only it sent all the inanimate objects back in time instead of him.  Figuring it out is going to require research which is looking a bit more complicated than usual since Billy’s lab seems to be in a different ‘when’. 

It doesn’t help that Billy is trying to see this is a success, rather than one more failure in an already long string of them.  It might actually be beyond him to consider standing in an empty reflection of his home and evil lair turned sanctuary as a triumph.  There’s nothing here to stand as a testament to what he’s trying to do, and he would happily trade the jarring emptiness away for cracked walls and blasted rubble.  

Billy half stumbles towards the empty counter where there used to be a pile of ignored messages from the E.L.E.  He spreads his hands over the empty space and absently notes the layer of dust. Everything hurts and Billy is honestly at a loss for what to do next.  The headache that has been slowly making itself known has settled behind one eye and the blood rushing in his ears is a low grind of sound that seems to fade in and out, as if the explosion that apparently took it personally is still going off in his brain. 

He turns on reflex towards the cabinet where he thought he remembered seeing a bottle of Advil that Moist had left him, before remembering that everything is gone.  Rather than dwelling on his truly distressing lack of drugs his jaw drops in surprise. Either his concussion has dipped into the realm of hallucinations or there was the faded outline of what looked like a blue box taking shape where his cabinet used to be.  

Billy watches the box gradually take a corporeal form and is aware in a distant sort of way that he should be panicking.  Instead he is desperately relieved. Not only can he feel the gust of displaced air as the strange box takes shape, proving that this is not a result of a broken brain, but he’s also determined the box to be the source of the grinding whoosh making his head ache.  Confirmation that he is not actually losing his mind is excellent news in his opinion, and while it isn’t much he’ll take it.

There is a white sign on one of the wood paneled doors and Billy forgets his ribs to let out a groan of disbelief, a frustrated sound that winds off into a half-broken wheeze when he sees “Police” in bold black letters.  He knows he has some of the worst luck imaginable, but getting blown up in an explosion that might not have happened, only to come face to face with a drastic change in law enforcement technology is a bit much even by his standards.  

The blue box, and what is with that color choice, finishes the transition into solid matter with a low thump and as Billy braces himself for whatever is coming he thinks wistfully of Captain Hammer.  It hurt to get punched and thrown into dumpsters, obviously, but there was some manner of comfort to be found in knowing exactly what to expect.

When the door opens Billy expects to see a flurry of dour expressions above armoured vests and guns with laser guides appearing on his chest and in his eyes. What he gets is a single man pushing out of the door, floppy brown hair falling into his eyes as he springs forward.  The twirl he executes is a bit over the top in Billy’s opinion.

“Yes, here, I’m sure of it.  At least I think I’m sure since the old girl hasn’t let me down yet.”  The words fall fast, a line of dominoes one after the other. His hands flick back and forth without seeming to do anything, and if he weren’t propped up against the counter Billy would take a big step back.  The man doesn’t look dangerous beyond the manic gleam in dark eyes and a propensity to talk to himself, he knows the flurry of words aren’t directed at him, but still…..

The stranger continues and Billy isn’t paying attention anymore.  He shoots a look towards the door, trying to decide if the stranger’s preoccupation will give him a chance to ease out of the room.

“It was definitely here, I can feel it, the metallic aftertaste that makes me crave peanuts.”  The man frowns, face scrunching up before he dismisses the emotion with another flick of long, lean fingers.  Reaching into his jacket he pulls out a small rod, the tips glowing green as he thumbs a switch. All of Billy’s plans for escape are immediately shunted to the side in the face of that low hum.  The green light trails through the air as the man twists his wrist back and forth, spinning on one heel and muttering under his breath.

Billy can’t look away.  Whatever it does the device itself is beautiful, long and sleek, the low bone deep thrum of technology that works in spite of everything.  In that man’s hand is the pinnacle of what Billy has been trying to achieve with his own creations. From the high-pitched whir of sound he theorizes it must be some manner of sonic device and there are questions piling up on his tongue about what the stranger is using as a power source.  It would have been tricky considering some metals would be too dense to act as an adequate casing without dampening the sonic wavelengths and Billy is seconds away from doing whatever it takes to find out, bruises and cracked ribs be-damned.

The man holds up the sonic array with another frown, forehead scrunched up in confusion.  “Very strange, not quite sure what to make of this. I’ve only seen readings like this from that thing with the Cyber-men and the Daleks.”  The tone is light, almost playful, but Billy doesn’t miss the flicker of pain. Something dark lurks in the tight corner of the man’s mouth and the white lingering around tight knuckles. 

It’s a look Billy recognizes, pain and rage twisting together until it’s impossible to tell where one starts and the other begins.  The only thing he can do is cover it all up with a red coat and hide behind his goggles and gloves, try so hard not to be the person that made such a massive mistake. 

When the glowing green end appears a scant inch from his nose Billy tries to bat it away.  The stranger doesn’t notice and continues to wave the device up and down the length of Billy’s body.  “Here too, which I suppose makes sense since you are definitely not from this universe. Bit like mixing jam and peanut butter I think, not bad but not exactly good either.  Feel free to share exactly what it was that set off the ripples in the dimensional wall. It’s the least you can do considering you’ve made me miss what was promising to be a very interesting super-nova.  It was going to be a thousand shades different shades of purple, and possibly create a new element. Even if it didn’t I would have liked to see the purple bits, so what do you have to say for yourself, hmm?”

It takes Billy a few seconds to parse through the rush of words and realize he’d been asked a question.  He isn’t quite sure what to make of the man’s earnest, expectant face or his energetic ramblings but figures he doesn’t exactly have a lot to lose at this point.  He almost shrugs before remember that would be a bad idea, “My Timer Reverter blew up.”

The man blinks at him.  “Your what?”

Moist might have been right about the name.  Time machine was so over-used though, not exactly leaving him a lot of imaginative options.  “My Time Reverter,” he said again. Billy makes a motion with the hand not pressed against his ribs in a rather useless attempt to trace the shape of with his fingers.  Or at least the shape it had been in when he saw it last. “It blew up and sent all my stuff through time.” Billy pauses when his still battered brain catches up with what the man had been muttering. “At least I hope that’s what it did.”

He’s in his lab that is now actually his lab, the emptiness scraping at him where it should be full of his things.  The man’s rather bizarre method of transportation has driven home the idea that has been niggling at him ever since he woke up.  Where ever he is, its not his home.

“Well that’s different.”  The stranger flips his sonic array end over end, catching it with a flourish that makes Billy’s heart sink.  

He recognizes the motion, as if the man is accustomed to dazzling an audience.  This man was a hero. It’s obvious now that Billy is looking for it. The bowtie and suspenders he’d glimpsed beneath the flare of the man’s jacket aren’t exactly traditional hero attire, but there’s something about the way he takes up more space than he should in the empty space between them that says hero.

“Care to explain to me how a machine built to manipulate the time streams managed to blow a hole into another dimension?  Which is where you are by the way,” the man says, and not only does he sound immensely satisfied with himself, but Billy’s pretty sure the sonic array’s low hum sounds smug as well.    

Definitely a hero then.  When a hero asked a question, there was usually the underlying assumption that they already knew the answer.  Just another way to show off. But so far this one seemed to be decent since in Billy’s experience they tended to ask with their fists and a discomforting level of enthusiasm.

Not to mention most heroes had smug superiority down to an art form.

“It was an accident,” Billy admits, shifting his weight only to freeze with a grunt when the motion set off a cascade of pain.

The sonic array skims the air over the vicinity of his ribs, a twist forcing open a set of prongs that Billy was convinced were going to end up jabbing into him.  Instead the stranger considers the glowing sensor, the frown from before coming back two-fold. “Three cracked ribs, no internal bleeding, some mild bruising and you bit your cheek at one point.  Probably during the initial explosion. Dimensional travel is rather rough when you do it willy-nilly as you did.”

Billy was opening his mouth to ask how he’d known that, there wasn’t even a screen on the array, when the man spins on one heel and strides back to the ‘Police Box’.  He pushes the door open, ignoring the sign that clearly states “Pull to Open” and disappears inside. The glimpse of the massive control room beyond the door sucker punches the air out of Billy’s chest before he can get the words out.  The sonic array is not forgotten so much as neatly shoved aside in the face of obvious dimensional manipulation. 

“This is really quite vexing, I’ll have you know.”  The man pushes the door open, why is the sign even there if it clearly doesn’t matter how the door is opened, and is at Billy’s side in three long steps.  “I’ve gotten rather tired of dealing with this kind of thing. The whole cracks in the universe thing has been done before and it was irritating then, just like it is now.”

Quick fingers start pulling at Billy’s coat, not hard enough to hurt, instead with the kind of exasperated insistence that he is in the way and it will be better if he just goes along with whatever the man wants.  There’s a huff when Billy tries to take a step back, almost non-existent eyebrows pulling together as the man fixes him with a Look.

“Now look here,” the man says, “I want answers since I find that it offends me when I don’t understand what’s going on.  Well not really, but Amy says that’s why I have to go investigating everything. Which I think is a bit rich coming from her, believe you me.”  The nods as if that explained anything and gives one last sharp tug on Billy’s scorched coat before once more heading for the strange blue box. There’s expectation there, as if he wants Billy to follow him.

Which was not going to happen, no matter how interesting all the man’s gadgets looked.  Heroes had it easy enough without Billy doing half their job for them.

“Who are you?” comes bursting out, all copper weight of blood on his tongue and fractured patience.  Probably a mistake to ask, since heroes didn’t like it when villains asked questions. 

The man stops as if hit with Billy’s Freeze Ray before spinning on one heel.  Billy braces himself when the look in the man’s eyes echo the crackling tension that had filled the air when the blue box first appeared.  Definitely shouldn’t have admitted he didn’t know who the man was. Heroes hated that.

“I didn’t say?”  The man tucks the sonic array into the inside pocket of his jacket.  He tugs at his lapels and straightens his bow tie, followed with a flick of his head that tosses floppy bangs that little bit higher.  “I am the Doctor.”

If Billy had harbored any doubts that this man was a hero, the smug superiority oozing off of him would have left them vaporized.  Billy is honestly surprised the man hasn’t been leaving a glistening trail where ever he stepped, almost like he path of a snail.

“Doctor who?”  Billy asks, very much aware that he has nothing to defend himself with, and running isn’t an option.  Best to keep him talking since he very much doubts getting out of the blue box will be much harder than getting in.

The ‘doctor’ beams.  “Exactly. Are you sure I didn’t introduce myself?  I tend to do that right away, you know. It’s a thing.”  He touches his fingertips to his bow tie again, a smile curling along the edges of his mouth.  “Lets everyone know who I am and why they should stay out of my way while I fix the problem. All at the same time.  Kind of genius that. But then, I am rather clever.” The doctor begins to rock back and forth on his heels, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders.

“I don’t...why...who…”  The concussion was clearly catching up with him.  Or maybe this doctor brings headaches with him wherever he goes.  A strange power for a hero, to inflict the symptoms he was supposed to treat on those around him.  Something more along the lines of a villain really. “What kind of doctor are you?” 

The doctor shakes his head and the beginnings of frustration brings Billy some relief.  It’s nice not to be the only one confused. “No, I’m not a doctor. I’m the Doctor. Quite a bit of difference really, which makes things so much more interesting.”  Billy’s relief goes plummeting when he sees the grin. It’s wide and happy, full of mischief, distracting him long enough for an arm to clamp around his shoulders like a vise.  “Ooh, Amy is going to be so upset that she missed this.”

Billy tries to pull away.  “Missed what?”

“Why, my finding a way back across dimensions to take you home.  I mean technically it’s impossible but I don’t really let that kind of thing stop me.  I think of it more as a challenge.”

Surprise has Billy going along without any real protest when the Doctor shepherds him towards the blue box.  “You’re going to take me home?”

The Doctor hums.  “Yes, of course. I do like challenges.”

“But you’re a hero.  Why would you help me?”

Billy desperately wishes he’d kept his mouth shut when the Doctor brings them both to a stop.  He looks at Billy, and the expression on his face would have Billy stammering apologies out as fast as he could say them, but his tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth.  It’s raw and broken, so close to the thing that Billy sees when he can bring himself to look in the mirror. 

“I’m not a hero, and I’m helping you because everyone deserves to be saved,” The Doctor says quietly.  

Struck dumb, Billy doesn’t have it in him to resist when is pushed into the blue box.     



End file.
